How to gain web3 competitive edge 

During the fall of 2014, attending the executive program of Singularity University at the heart of the Silicon Valley, the idea that Blockchain would be as significant to the growth of the internet in the next fifteen years as the internet has been in the previous 25 years started to grow in my mind. 

Two market cycles after, I have seen many of the world’s best minds and billions of dollars in investment pouring into the space to figure out how to use the technology to make a fully digital society a reality. The adoption of Bitcoin has increased its positioning as a store of value; smart contracts have enabled crowdfunding, stablecoins, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and Decentralized finance (DeFi). 

Companies in various industries use blockchain to streamline processes and foster greater transparency and trust. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global blockchain market is projected to grow from $7.18 billion in 2022 to $163.83 billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 56.3% in the forecast period.  

Blockchain is more than Bitcoin, Stable Coins, NFTs, DeFi, and Crypto.

Considering the pandemic, we have seen that the two main factors driving the expansion of the blockchain market are the financial services sector’s competitiveness and the health sector’s digitalization. Also, growth is fueled by the increased demand for data security, and there is already noticeable progress in the supply chain, gaming, music, and the arts. 

Our Web3 innovation practice has been helping firms in the fintech, financial services, energy, healthcare, entertainment, manufacturing, and telecommunications sectors to assess the impact of blockchain and other exponential technology and trends on their business, develop integrated programs to enhance their current business models, create new ones, and gain and track their competitive advantages. 

We know from experience that blockchain is still in its infancy and that it has yet to demonstrate its potential to transform the current internet into the internet of the future. But every business needs to dip a toe into the web3 wave. While in most businesses, it might still be early to commit entirely, there are certain areas where the race has already started. 

Why Blockchain? 

We are moving from the sharing economy into the ownership economy with new ways people organize around a project; communities and decentralized organizations will play a critical role. Blockchain technology becomes essential for business and society if you believe that material contributions should have clear ownership and provenance. 

Blockchain is a platform for disintermediation; it is about trust, decentralization, and ownership. Consumers can own their data, and the technology enables tools to reward contributors and user behavior, boosting creativity, collaboration, and digital communities.  

Communities are starting to engage their members, simplifying the technology and the user experience, and from there, they are beginning to explore opportunities. Therefore, adoption driven by digital communities will be critical and effective.  

When technology is simple to use and solves a real problem, it is quickly embraced by the public. As it is, blockchain will not be an exception. Businesses must explore, build, measure, learn, and repeat to develop the skills required to flourish in the web3. 

How to gain web3 competitive edge? 

Below are the components of a disruptive innovation system to help organizations embrace blockchain disruption, gain competitive advantages, and make web3 happen. 

  1. Begin with a Massive Transformative Purpose that can be taken by your organization and your community or one that can draw a new community.  
  1. Proactively and pragmatically assess market trends impacting your business to identify opportunities where trust, ownership, and disintermediation have the potential to change the future of your industry. 
  1. Leverage your Purpose, develop relationships, and nurture community; this way, the right people will find you. 
  1. Engage your community, and educate yourself on web3 to better identify the problems your organization can solve and the jobs to be done with the customer at the core. 
  1. Set aggressive objectives and 3-5 measurable key results (OKRs), run experiments, fall fast, and learn quickly. 
  1. Establish and maintain a business rhythm and help your team to identify what they need to create new business models and monetization mechanisms. 
  1. Use data, dashboards, and real-time information to make informed decisions about where and how to invest across the web3 innovation portfolio. 
  1. Understand and measure your key success factors (KSFs), and hold yourself and your team accountable. Identify the #1 most prominent specific and measurement activity to success. 
  1. Wash, rinse, and repeat; and make sure you extend your web3 disruption innovation culture. 

Those who don’t start climbing the web3 learning curve may miss the most significant value-creation opportunity of our lifetimes, just as many people did during the transition to the world wide web in the 90s and the second wave during the 00s, where the user-generated content business models emerged. 

If you have any comments or suggestions or would like to continue the conversation, do get in touch with us. 
 

It’s important to remember that a platform is a business model.

Customers were joining the Zoom conference for our advisory call. As I got to know new ecosystem participants, one of the potential consultants enquired, “how can my customers build their platforms?”

I welcomed the question, which addressed my opening statement to them.

“Many people mistake a platform with a piece of technology, such as a mobile app or a website, but a platform is more than just software. It is a comprehensive business model that generates value by connecting consumers and producers.”

A successful platform business must attract participants, make it easy for people to connect, and foster member exchange and co-creation. We believe four strategic challenges should be addressed for a platform business to prosper.

  1. Determine the consumer and producer sides of your platform.
  2. Resolve the chicken or egg conundrum: how to get volume from multiple sides?
  3. Create your business model – who pays, who does not, and where are the profits.
  4. Create and enforce ecosystem rules. Who should have the authority to do what?

How to make possible a successful B2B Platform business?

We think the Exponential Organization (ExO) framework helps to answer the question. A Massive Transformative Purpose that pulls a community, fosters connections and gives the members something to rally around is necessary for a successful B2B platform business. Additionally, the right combination of internal and external ExO attributes is needed. Our professional experience has shown us that a platform may be enabled by integrating the blueprints for Community-Engagement-Experimentation and Algorithms-Interfaces-Experimentation.

Platform attributes
ExO Attributes Platform Business

Community-Engagement-Experimentation blueprint

When someone suggested making Miami a tech hub on Twitter in December 2020, Mayor Suarez replied, “How can I help?” It sparked a rush of movement.

A “how can I help?” mindset and culture are essential to understanding your community’s needs and engaging the members to generate experiments and eventually scale. Starting small and moving fast using your community for insights, ideation, and product adoption truly help to test and pivot your own platform business and help to match the pivot of your customers.

According to The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Successful B2B User Community, three elements need to come together to get engaging moving: content, traffic, and activation.

Early in the formation of the Openexo and yWhales communities, moderators played a crucial role in seeding discussions and responding to customer posts. Later both communities started to focus on content to drive traffic to their community, pulling and pushing the flow of visitors from outside sources. Ultimately, activation or engagement is about getting that buy-in from new users and encouraging regular activity in the community.

Engagement is essential for getting as many people through the activation funnel as possible and developing a solid community of loyal, engaged super-users and ambassadors. Without these individuals, the community would not have as much content for people at the top of the activation funnel to enjoy!

Algorithms-Interfaces-Experimentation

I remember the first time I visited the Airbnb website in 2014; I was captivated by its simplicity and clarity. Their messages and call to action connected with my needs and got my attention.

In a B2B platform business, the Interfaces refer to how the community will interact with your company. Therefore, before designing your interface, you need to identify the sources of abundance you are accessing, think about how to humanize the user experience, create standardized processes, and apply algorithms to automate processes. Finally, you need to test the interfaces with your community members and update those interfaces regularly based on the results of your experiments.

Additionally, the interfaces should offer unique digital experiences. For example, gamification tools like user ranks, badges, reputation indicators, and likes are excellent ways to engage customers and drive them along the sales funnel.

Final thoughts

To conclude, we want to reveal some practical recommendations we learned from the mistakes we made when creating B2B communities, mistakes you should not make.

  1. Start small and move fast instead of making a “big bang” launch.
  2. Don’t concentrate only on technology.
  3. Expecting your community to entirely replace your marketing or customer service is unrealistic.
  4. Avoid leaving your community to “self-regulate.”
  5. Avoid misinterpreting the true motivations of your community members.

ExO attributes are essential only if connected to your business model; developing your business model is the key. Platform businesses have the potential to tip your market due to economies of scale, but they can also result in significant financial loss.

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